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Back in stock

When something in your store sells out, a shopper can ask to be notified when it is back. That ask is a request, and it stands until it is answered.

Content → Back in stock is where you see who is waiting. One row per variant, longest queue first.

Asking is not joining your list

This is the part worth reading twice, because it is the opposite of what most tools do.

A back-in-stock request is not consent to hear from you. It cannot start a welcome automation, it does not put anyone on a list, it does not make anyone confirmed and subscribed, and it records no consent. It authorizes exactly one thing: telling that person about that one variant.

If the shopper also wants your news and offers, that is a separate box on the same form that they tick themselves — and the record of it says which one it was. You choose whether the box appears at all, and how it arrives, on the settings page.

So a store with two hundred people waiting has not gained two hundred people it may email about anything else. It has gained two hundred promises about two hundred products.

Setting it up

The Settings page walks three steps, and the second — adding the block to your product page — now says whether it is done: Carpe Messaging reads your published theme and names it when the block is in place. Where it cannot read your theme it says Could not check rather than guessing, and leaves the button where it was — adding a block twice is not possible, so pressing it again on a page that already has one costs you nothing but a look.

What the shopper sees

On a product page whose selected variant is sold out, the Notify control stands where the theme's own sold-out button was, and your store's Buy it now button for that product is put away with it — a sold-out variant has nothing to buy. Both come back the moment somebody picks a variant they can buy.

That control is the only way in. Pressing it opens a pop-up — and that pop-up is your form, the one in Content → Forms called Back in stock notification. Its words, its colors, its image and its fields are yours to change, in the same editor as every other form you have.

It names the product and the variant — by name, every time, because a form that says "this product" is a form nobody can check. You write that sentence once — Email me when {{product_name}} is back — and your store fills the names in, whatever the shopper is looking at.

{{product_name}} becomes the product's name and {{variant_name}} becomes the variant's. On a product with only one variant {{variant_name}} is nothing at all, and a line with nothing else on it disappears with it — so the same form reads correctly on a jacket in five sizes and on a candle in one. The thank-you panel can use both, and {{email}} for the address they typed.

A shopper who is signed in to your store finds their name and email address already filled in — they are your store's own, for whoever is signed in on that browser, and the boxes are still theirs to change. A shopper who is not signed in sees an empty form.

The image at the top is an image block set to the product rather than to one of yours: it shows the variant's own photograph where there is one, the product's where there is not, and nothing at all where there is neither.

Two things on that form cannot be taken off it, because a form without them is a form nobody can check: your store will not publish it if the first panel does not name the product or does not name the variant. As on every form, the line saying what the shopper is agreeing to has to be there too. The wording is yours.

The image is the one you can move, resize, restyle or delete — and if you delete it your store puts a small one back at the top of the panel, because a form that cannot show what it is about is the thing all of this exists to prevent. To put your own back, add an image block and open Which image: on this form the choices are The product — the image your store fills in — and an image you choose yourself.

Somebody your store already knows is shown something shorter, and it is not a pop-up: one line saying where you will write to them — with most of the address hidden, because a product page is cached and served to everybody — and one button, standing where the sold-out button was. They type nothing, and asking them to open something first would be a press for nothing. If it is not their address, Not you? opens your form — and so does the app itself, quietly, if that shorter panel has been sitting open a while, or if anything at all gets in the way of that one button when they press it. Either way the person ends up on the form everybody else sees, they can finish there, and nobody is stuck.

There is one extra step, and it is the one thing people ask about: the first time somebody submits a request, the app holds it and asks again. Nothing is emailed to a held request. The second look is what settles it. That is how bots are kept out of your restock requests, and it is the same for everybody — a clean address and a bad one are treated alike, because an answer that differed between the two would be a free way for anyone to test other people's addresses at your expense.

The form editor shows you all three. Press Test and preview on your back-in-stock form and Preview as offers New shopper (your pop-up), Known shopper (the shorter panel, with an example address — press Notify me in it to see what they see next, or Not you? to go back to the pop-up) and After they ask (your thank-you panel). While you are editing, the pop-up also shows the Also send me news and offers box directly above the button, drawn the way your setting in Back in stock → Settings draws it, and a dashed box where the bot check appears. That dashed box is only in the editor: most shoppers see nothing there at all, and the few the check is unsure about see a tick box in that spot.

There is no confirmation email. A shopper who asks is never emailed to confirm the ask. The only mail a request ever causes is the one that says the thing is back, or the one that says it is not coming back.

What closes a request

Three things, and nothing else.

Being notified does not close a request. That is the whole shape of this feature: somebody notified about a restock who did not buy keeps their place, and on the next restock they are first. Being notified twice, or five times, is normal.

The numbers on the screen

Each row carries the queue and three numbers about it, because "eleven people waiting" hides the thing you would want to know.

Those three exist because keeping somebody's place has a cost: the same few people are at the front every time, so if a restock is always small, the same few hear about it and the rest never do. The app does not quietly reorder your queue to fix that. It shows you, and you can hold a restock and decide.

Nothing here counts what nobody opened. Mail apps open email on the reader's behalf, and several never report an open at all, so "they ignored it" is not a fact anybody has. What the screen counts is how many times you notified them.

Two more numbers sit under the queue when they apply, and neither is part of it: how many are still waiting on a check, and how many addresses could not be confirmed. Nothing is ever emailed to either.

Paging. Under the table you choose how many to show at a time — 25, 50 or 100 per page — and step through with Previous and Next. The line beside them says where you are: Page 3 of 5. Type a number in the box to jump straight to a page. The page you are on is part of the address, so opening a variant's queue and coming back puts you back where you were, and the size you choose is remembered the next time you open this screen. Restocks waiting for you counts every held restock in your store, not the ones on the page in front of you.

How your form is doing

At the top of Content → Back in stock, and on each variant's page just under the counts at the top, a short summary says what your form has done, since it started:

Under those, smaller: Bought later (more than five days after being notified), Bought before we notified them, and — only when there are any — the asks still waiting on a check and those that could not be confirmed. Neither of the last two is counted in the numbers above.

What "bought" means. An order your store told us about, for that variant, from the same email address or the same person, placed after they asked. So a guest order with no email address on it, or somebody who asked about the medium and bought the large, is not counted — we would rather miss a sale than claim one we cannot show.

Why five days. It is the same five days a campaign's orders are counted over, so the two can be compared. Purchases after that are not hidden; they are Bought later, right beside it. The same order can appear here and on a campaign too, because the two answer different questions: this one asks whether the person who asked went on to buy what they asked for.

Nothing here counts opens, for the same reason as below: an open is not a fact anybody has. And nothing here is money — the summary counts asks, not order value.

If a store has taken a great many asks, the summary can occasionally say We couldn't count this just now. Nothing is wrong; reload the page and it counts again. A store nobody has asked in yet shows no summary at all.

Your back-in-stock form's own page, in Content → Forms, links here with See how this form is doing.

When a product goes away

Nothing closes automatically, because you may be replacing it. Two lines appear on the row instead:

No longer in your store

for a product deleted or no longer active in Shopify, and

Sells at zero stock, so no restock will open

for a variant you have set to keep selling when stock is gone. In both cases the people waiting are still waiting, and Mark as discontinued in the row menu is how you tell them.

What a viewer sees

Everything. The queue, the numbers, one variant's own page and the settings are all readable by every role.

Four acts are not: Notify the next group now, Hold this variant, Mark as discontinued and canceling somebody's request. Those need the same permission as sending a campaign — a marketer, a manager or your owner, because each of them changes who this restock emails. Changing the wave settings, the store-wide Hold every restock for me, or Follow the store setting on one variant is a manager's, like your other store settings.

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